Newark's Workforce Investment Board will get $3 million in federal funding to implement a first-of-its-kind data program measuring the effectiveness of its job training and placement services, officals said today.

"I think Newark is going to offer a model we're going to replicate around the United States," said Deputy Secretary of Labor Seth Harris in remarks at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. "It's a trial. As far as I know, it doesn't exist anywhere else in the country."

The money will be spent on a computer program and analysts to examine the results of different job training initiatives.

Harris, Newark Mayor Cory Booker and state Department of Labor Commissioner Harold Wirths all hailed the funding as a necessary step to preparing New Jerseyans for high-tech jobs that are in many cases filled by bringing in foreign workers with H-1B visas.

"What does it mean if we're doing all of this development, all of this construction, all of these companies, and we cannot connect Newark residents to those job opportunities?" Booker said. "This is the critical challenge of the 21st century. Will we prepare the workforce of Americans to meet those 21st century jobs?"

The goal of the program is to improve workforce training through performance monitoring, just as CompStat has for policing in New York, and CitiStat has for city services in Baltimore, the officials said.

Some money will be spent on the technology itself, but the majority will be spent on staffing to oversee the new data program, according to Lora Krsulich of the NWIB.

Nelida Valentin, the executive director of the NWIB, said the organization will probably release information gathered by the program on an annual basis to the public.